Forty years on, we are only just beginning to understand the significance
of the Council, says Fr Ian Ker. And we are still a long way from implementing itIt is 40 years since the opening of the Second Vatican Council. The Council
was convoked by Pope John XXIII for two purposes: the renewal or aggiornamento
of the Catholic Church and Christian reunion - two goals which are
surely integrally related. The Pope expressed the hope that it would be the beginning of a new Pentecost for the
Church.

There have, indeed, been substantial achievements. A nineteenth century Catholic
would be amazed at the transformation of the papacy. Pius IX, who denounced democracy and progress and who had
to be defended against his own subjects in the papal states by foreign mercenaries, would have been surprised at
the thought of one of his successors travelling round the world and upholding human rights and justice. In Catholic
countries, where formerly the Church was ready to turn a blind eye to political abuses in return for a guarantee
of its privileges and rights, the Church is, or is expected to be, at the forefront of protest against the infringement
of people's freedoms and rights. Similarly, what was once a fortress Church is now seriously engaged in dialogue
with non-Christian religions as well as other Christian bodies. Internally, too, there have been significant reforms
in a number of areas. There is a new code of canon law. New instruments of collegiality and subsidiarity have been
put into place. No one would now say, as a famous English monsignore of the nineteenth century asserted, that the province of the laity was to hunt, shoot,
and to fish. The vernacular has been introduced into the Mass and the other sacraments and few would wish to return
to a wholly Latin rite.

However, inevitably there have been problems and distortions. The pursuit of justice
and peace has sometimes seemed to supersede the preaching of the Gospel. The Council's teaching on the role of
the laity has, paradoxically, led to a certain clericalisation of the laity, and bishops have often given the impression
that the way to implement the decree on the laity is to build up as large a bureaucracy as possible and set up
innumerable committees and commissions. Indeed, at times it seems that human organisation has made the Spirit redundant.
This has also affected the search for Christian unity, which is not always best served by proliferating ecumenical
structures. There too there have been serious aberrations which, to use the old pre-Vatican II word, can only be
termed as encouraging indifferentism. In spite of the Council's call for a renewal of the rite of reconciliation,
the practice of confession has catastrophically declined; some claim that the answer is general absolution, but
sacraments are personal not collective. Finally, and most serious from the point of view of the ordinary Catholic,
the English vernacular translations have proved less than satisfactory in their banality and infidelity to the
Latin original.

It will take time to get the right balance; there were bound to be exaggerations
and misinterpretations. In reaction to the Protestant reformation, Trent had emphasised those doctrines that were
under attack, which led to the inevitable neglect of those other Catholic doctrines, like the priesthood of all
believers, that the Reformers were stressing. That has also happened in the wake of Vatican II. As Cardinal John
Henry Newman remarked, one council does one thing and another another. Moreover, what councils don't say is also
significant. Thus evangelisation was not a theme of the Council, with the inevitable unfortunate consequences -
that is, until Paul VI's Evangelii Nuntiandi (1974) moved the Church in a new direction.

Few would say it has been a very Pentecostal time. For many, it has seemed more
like a Golgotha, with falling Mass attendances and declining vocations, at least in most of the developed world.
For others, it has been like a blighted spring, in which high hopes have been dashed by the failure to pursue the
progressive agenda.

As a student of Newman, who is often referred to as the "father of the Second Vatican Council", I take comfort
from his reflections at the time of the First Vatican Council. There are several points he makes which are I think
very relevant to our own post-conciliar situation. First, he warned that patience is called for as time finds remedies
for what seem insuperable problems. Second, he pointed out that time is also needed for the implementation of conciliar
teachings. There are two reasons for this. In the first place, implementation requires interpretation: texts do
not speak for themselves, they have to be read and digested and elucidated.

There was an idea immediately after the Council that bishops could simply return
to their dioceses and implement the Council. That was a very simplistic idea. Some obvious changes or reforms can
be implemented in this way, others take time and involve a number of different parties. Certainly, authority is
involved through the pope and bishops: John Paul II has more than played his part in this, as have other charismatic
bishops like Cardinal Lustiger of Paris with his radical reform of the seminary system. But it is not only the
magisterium that is involved. Other parts of the Church also have a responsibility for the realisation of Vatican
II. Theologians have their role to play as exegetes of the conciliar texts, which have to be understood in relation
to the tradition of the Church and to previous councils and magisterial teachings. The grassroots faithful baptised,
whether priests or religious or laity, also take part in the process of the reception of a council. And last, but
by no means least, those endowed with special charisms - and these charisms are given for the needs of the Church,
not least at the time of a council. Thus the Ignatian charism was providential for the implementation of the Council
of Trent, since without the Society of Jesus it is hard to see how the Tridentine reforms could ever been carried
out.

There is a further clue to be found in Newman's writings about how the post-conciliar
Church is likely to develop. At the beginning of his most famous theological work, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, he
says that it is not true of a religious idea or belief that "the stream
is clearest near the spring". On the contrary, it "is more equable, and purer, and stronger, when its bed has become deep, and broad, and
full. It necessarily rises out of an existing state of things, and for a time savours of the soil. Its vital element
needs disengaging from what is foreign and temporary..."

If we can apply this to the teachings of Vatican II, then we have to conclude that
the meaning of the Council will become clearer in the course of time and that even those who participated in it
are less likely to understand its full significance than later generations. If we are too close to something, we
may not see it as it really is. And Newman's expression "savours of
the soil" reminds us that the soil out of which the Council came was
the sixties and that "its vital element needs disengaging from what
is foreign and temporary". I believe that what is called "the spirit of Vatican II" is precisely that
interpretation of the Council which savours of the Sixties, and until its "vital
element" is disengaged from what is essentially "foreign and temporary" the Council will not
bear the fruit it was intended to.

I remember a newspaper article by Bishop BC Butler in the Seventies to
the effect that Vatican II could not be implemented until the older generation that was too set in its ways to
really accept the Council had passed away. I am sure that was true, but it is also true of the generations that
came to maturity in the Sixties and Seventies and who experienced the Council as though it were a revolution rather
than simply another development in the Church's history and tradition. Until all those who saw or see Vatican II
as a complete break with the Church's past have disappeared from the scene the Council will continue to be misunderstood.

Finally, as Pope John Paul II has said, one of the most important achievements
of the Council was the rediscovery of the charismatic dimension of the Church. The Pope also sees the new ecclesial
movements and communities as being an answer to Pope John's dream of a new Pentecost. This unexpected phenomenon
was not planned or predicted by Vatican II, but nevertheless it represents a concrete realisation of the Council's
Constitution on the Church,
at the heart of which is the idea of communion between all the baptised whatever their state in the Church, whether
clerical or religious or lay. That is why the new communities and movements are ecclesial and not lay as they are
often called. It is interesting how those who claim to have "the spirit
of Vatican II" are the very people in the Church who most dislike
this great charismatic outburst, and who even ludicrously try to argue that it is "against Vatican II".